TWILIGHT: It's been super duper hot up here in Seattle (yeah, I know, it's all relative), and so last night the kids escaped the heat of their bedrooms and slept out on the roofdeck.
One of the bonuses of doing that is they get a great view of the moonrise (which was spectacular last night!), and the stars and planets and occasional meteors streaking across the sky.
The cell phone shot of them inside their mosquito net above might not look like much, but it's the depiction of a golden, full moon rising over Queen Anne hill in the background, and the foreground is the launch of the Russian International Space Station cargo resupply mission, live. Super cool!
The ISS really really needs the cargo. Not even a week ago, a SpaceX supply mission to the ISS blew up shortly after takeoff. And earlier this year, a different Progress/Russian resupply mission launch went into a wonky orbit, with the spacecraft falling back down to Earth some days later (around Mother's Day, as I recall). And then a few months ago, an Orbital Sciences resupply mission barely made it off the launchpad. In other words, the last three cargo supply attempts to the ISS have failed. An unprecedented string of failures, really.
However, so far so good for the Progress launched last night.
Progress 60 is carrying more than 6,100 pounds of food, fuel, and supplies. The craft will make 34 orbits of Earth before docking to the orbiting laboratory just after July 4th's midnight.
photo: NASA TV
WISE WORDS: Spied yesterday, painted on the side of an outbuilding at the Bitterlake Community Center.
Moon and an ISS launch - cool.
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